[A version of this essay will be published in an upcoming issue of Fight, Laugh, Feast magazine.]
The Christian faith built Western civilization. While Western Civilization (aka “Christendom”) was never perfect, it was glorious – certainly the apex of human history thus far. Christendom was our Shire – a civilizational and cultural home we had built for ourselves. The gospel worked like mustard seed and leaven, growing the kingdom of Christ extensively and intensively. The culture produced by the gospel was full of truth, goodness, and beauty. The church’s impact on medieval culture gave us the hospital, the university, representative and constitutionally limited government, musical notation, cathedrals, free markets, the eradication of slavery, the beginnings of modern science, the suppression of sexual perversion and the championing of lifelong monogamous marriage, and so much more. It was a civilization based on ordered liberty, rooted in Scripture and God’s creational design, protecting God-given natural rights and stressing God-assigned personal responsibilities.
Today, we live in a “cut flower” civilization — the flower is not completely wilted, but the West is no longer drawing cultural strength and energy from the gospel. The Scriptures have been de-centrered and the church has been marginalized. Our culture today continues to run off the borrowed but quickly depleting capital that our ancestors in the faith accumulated for us. The achievements of Christendom from the time of Constantine’s conversion in 312 up until very recently are truly astounding, but much of that cultural momentum is fading. As heirs of this glorious heritage, we should zealously to defend what is left of Christendom and pass it on to our heirs. We should work at building Christendom 2.0, a civilization that once again acknowledges Christ’s lordship over all of life and flowers with goodness, beauty, and truth.
It is a truism that anytime something good has been built, others will want to take it, one way or another. When you construct a Shire, attempts to scour the Shire are sure to follow. Build something glorious and others will try to hijack it or steal it. This is exactly how things have played out in Western Civilization. Almost from the start, Christendom was under attack. At times Christians did an admirable job defending their civilization. At other times, like our own, not so much.
The biggest scourge to Christendom for much of the last 1400 years has been Islam. Islam was founded by Mohammad when a demon masquerading as an angel of light gave him a revelation in 610. Islam exploded after his death in 632. By the ninth century, Muslims had invaded and captured much of Europe and the Middle East — about two-thirds of of Christendom had been conquered, not to mention countless Christian pilgrims slaughtered. The once Christian lands of Palestine, Egypt, Armenia, Jordan, Syria, Spain, France, and Italy were all largely overtaken by Muslim aggression, and the Christian presence in many of those lands has never recovered. Charles Martel turned back Islam from France in the Battle of Tours in 732, but the Islamic threat did not go away and Muslims continued to press closer into the heart of Europe.
The Crusades, starting in the late eleventh century, were a delayed response to Muslim aggression and were largely fought as defensive wars to recapture lands that had been lost to Islam, particularly Palestine. The Crusades, while not without their flaws, were an act of Christian brotherhood, as Christians in Europe sought to rescue and liberate their brothers in the faith from Islamic oppression in the Middle East. Christian nobles and elites often went to fight at their own expense, at least in the early crusades. To give a sense of the magnitude of Islamic imperialism, consider that starting in 1004, the Fatmid Caliph destroyed 30,000 churches over a ten year period in the Mediterranean basin – indicating not only how heavily churched the region had become, but also how devastating the Muslim jihad was. Christians continued to fight off Muslim encroachments in Europe into the early modern period. Crucial engagements include the Seige of Malta in 1565 when the Knights Hospitaller held off Suleiman the Magnificent’s attempted conquest, the Battle of Lepanto in 1571 when the Holy League navy defeated the Ottoman Empire in a decisive sea engagement, and the Battle of Vienna in 1683 when the Polish King John Sobieski and his cavalry known as the winged hussars routed a much larger Turkish force. While the Crusades yielded mixed results in the Middle East, Europe was saved again and again by brave defenders of Christendom. Rodney Stark’s fine book, God’s Battalions, chronicles much of this history quite well, as do the works of Raymond Ibrahim. But my purpose here is not to retell those stories; rather it is to consider what we can learn from them today.
When we survey the landscape of this history, what stands out most is the sheer confidence Christians once had – confidence in God, confidence in the gospel, confidence in the culture their faith had created, confidence to stand up to their enemies even in armed conflict if necessary, confidence in God’s unfolding plan for the future. Christian confidence was public. Christian confidence was militant. Christian confidence was generational. It was this confidence that put a sword in one hand and a trowel in the other. This confidence inspired the courage to build and defend. Christians knew they had created a civilization worth defending — and so they vigorously defended, even if it cost them their lives. The fought for their faith, their families, and for future generations.
Fast forward to the twenty-first century. Christians not only lack confidence, they are often ashamed of their faith, their heritage, their history. Take a representative example from 2011: The popular evangelical campus ministry once known as “Campus Crusade for Christ” decided the word “crusade” was too offensive and so the ministry rebranded as “Cru.” Never mind the fact that “Campus Crusade” only ever used the “crusader” motif in a highly metaphorical way for their evangelistic efforts. Never mind the fact that the historical crusades were largely good and justified, a cause Christians could generally be proud of. The mere thought that the word “crusade” might cause offense or occasion controversy was enough to bring about a change. The softer, more effeminate, privatized Christian faith of the modern Western church cannot be associated with anything martial or aggressive. Surrender has become a Christian habit of mind. We are no longer crusaders in the sense of defending Christian civilization, nor in the sense of conquering the lost through the sword of gospel preaching; we are no longer Christian soldiers marching onward, but Christian wimps, hoping to appease our progressive masters and get a seat at pluralism’s table.
But Western nations face a much bigger problem than campus ministry rebrands. Progressive elites across the West have welcomed in Muslim immigrants. This Marxist/Muslim alliance is seeking the annihilation of Christian civilization throughout the West. We used to defend our lands against Muslim hordes; now they are invited in, often put on welfare benefits, and then elected to civil office. At least seven notable English cities have Muslim mayors. In America, Muslims have been elected as mayors, legislators, and judges, with the numbers increasing in every election cycle.
In the past, Christians certainly desired to evangelize Muslims, but they also knew that Islam was fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization and so any Muslim immigration to Western lands was carefully monitored. Not so in our politically correct, progressive age. To discriminate against Muslims would be racist and Islamophobic. To “notice” increasing crime, especially rape, correlated with Muslim immigration patterns, would be racist and Islamophobic. Over the last 25 years, Western Europe has gone from 500,000 Muslims to over 40 million – an absolutely astounding increase. Most of these Muslims are not interested in assimilating to traditional Western culture. And as Charlie Kirk put it, “Immigration without assimilation is invasion.” Muslims see no reason to respect an insipid, weak, soft, mediocre version of the Christian faith, which is all they encounter from most Western churches today. Muslims can now take over the West without raising a scimitar. Europe is becoming Eurabia. The backbone of Christendom is broken.
Of course, while Europe may be further gone, America has its own set of issues. Politicians openly lie, telling us absurdities like “Somalis built America” with a straight face. Consider Dearborn, Michigan, or the Somali welfare fraud in Minnesota, or the election of Marxist-Muslim Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City. The eerie sounds of the adhan now fill the air of New York City, while the streets fill with trash. Skyscrapers, including the Freedom Tower, are lit green for Muslim American Heritage Month. But free buses and grocery stores make it all worthwhile — or so idiotic voters think. This is the point: While Westerners have either completely abandoned Christian faith, or completely privatized their Christian faith, Muslims and Marxists have confidence that they are going to win. They want to rule the Shire and many Christians are too weak to stand up to them. We are a crisis point. Will Sharkey control the Shire or will the hobbits finally fight back?
Faithful American Christians are well aware of the fact that we face many enemies and must fight on many fronts. But politically, most Muslims are part of the broad progressive coalition that includes feminists, unassimilated immigrants, LGBTQ+ advocates, socialists/statists, welfare scammers, cat ladies, and other assorted victim identity groups who despise historic America and (much more importantly) despise Christ and Christian civilization. The progressive coalition is bound together by the belief that America is evil, Christian faith is bigoted, whites are privileged oppressors, masculinity is toxic — and progressives believe that somehow the demise of all of these will be to their benefit. They have invaded the Shire, and they will turn it into Mordor if given the chance.
The problem is most Western Christians in general, and American Christians in particular, simply do not have the confidence that past generations of believers had. And lacking confidence, we also lack courage. We are easily tossed to and fro by name-calling and politically correct shaming. We all too easily allow our faith to be privatized. We let them silence our church bells, but do nothing to stop the adhan. Muslims have more confidence in their demonic god and the tyrannical culture their faith produces than Christians do in the true God and the beautiful civilization the gospel has created. Many Christians have been brainwashed by progressivism to think that the history of their nation and their faith is corrupt, something to be ashamed of more than something to preserve. Many Christians, in the grip of misguided empathy, think they are being virtuous when they surrender territory to progressives and Muslims. Russell Moore and other Big Eva personalities celebrate the demise of the Bible Belt and historic Christian culture, even as they laud open borders and defend the building of mosques.
We are not fighting for our Shire; we are handing it over to our enemies. Muslims and progressives will inherit what Christians built – and then they will tear it all down. Christians must understand what’s at stake in our current moment; we stand at a crossroads and must decide if we want to live in the Shire or in Calormene or in Oceania. The reality is that Western civilization is worth defending today every bit as much as in 732 or 1683 – but far too many Christians lack the will and courage to do so. This is the history lesson we need to learn before it’s too late: Failing to defend Christian civilization is a failure to love. It not only dishonors our ancestors who built it, it is cruel to our descendants who will never get to enjoy it. Vestiges of the Shire still remain at the moment – we will either fight for our Shire and rebuild it, or we will lose it for good.
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